by LJ Ross
“I seem to recognise that guy,” she said, after a moment. “I wish I could remember where I’ve seen him before.”
“I ran background checks on all the residents here,” Yates told her. “Ryan requested it, yesterday. Paul Hutchinson’s got no previous; none of them have, apart from Gemma’s son, Josh, who accepted a caution when he was eighteen for possession of marijuana.”
“Hardly a capital offence,” MacKenzie was bound to say. “Fairly standard eighteen-year-old behaviour, not that I’d know much about it.”
Before she could take measures to prevent it, she found herself imagining what it might be like to parent a teenager, one who got himself into scrapes with the law. She wondered what it might feel like to carry a baby in her womb, or to worry about their first day at school. She’d seen approximations on television, in films, in the books she’d read and from the friends she’d spoken to, over the years. But she’d never known motherhood, with its highs and lows, its simplicity and complexity.
It did no good to dwell on things she couldn’t change, MacKenzie told herself. She was too old to be thinking of children; much too old.
When Yates spoke again, she was glad of the distraction.
“I wonder why Josh didn’t take his father’s name?”
MacKenzie dragged her eyes away from a large wooden sign above the bar which read, ‘NO RIFF RAFF’ in fancy painted gold letters, and faced the younger woman.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why doesn’t he go by ‘Josh Hutchinson’?” she said, keeping her voice low. “Do you think they don’t get on?”
“He’s the boy’s uncle, not his father,” MacKenzie replied. “It was in Ryan’s summary.”
Yates flushed. It wasn’t like her not to be diligent in her work; then again, she’d been distracted, mostly by her newfound attraction for DC Lowerson. It was galling to know she could be so affected, and she had a firm word with herself about it.
“Sorry,” she muttered. “I must have missed it.”
But MacKenzie shrugged it off, and a moment later they were re-joined by Hutch and a woman they presumed to be Gemma Dawson. From the photos they’d seen of the various persons of interest and material witnesses Ryan had tacked to the wall in their temporary Incident Room, their first thought was that she did not resemble her son at all. Where Gemma was blonde—albeit, helped a little by the hairdresser, nowadays—and blue-eyed, her son had curly dark hair, almost as dark as Ryan’s, and brown eyes of a different shape to his mother’s.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Gemma said, a bit breathless from her mad rush to pull on some clothes and run a brush through her hair. “Paul told me you’re from CID?”
“Yes, we wanted to ask you some questions about the late Mandy Jones.”
Gemma walked across to the bar, where she busied herself making coffee, which they politely refused.
“How long had you known Amanda Jones?”
“We were at school together,” Gemma said. “We all were,” she added, with a smile for Hutch who was hovering protectively nearby.
“Was she a friend of yours?”
There was an almost imperceptible pause, then Gemma shrugged.
“We rubbed along,” she said, not wishing to speak ill of the dead. “She came in every now and again, especially since Daisy works for us.”
“I see. I’m sorry to ask you to go over everything again, Ms Dawson, but can you tell us how you came to find her body this morning?”
Gemma’s eyes became clouded and the buoyant mood she’d enjoyed for the last couple of hours began to fade away.
“I’m trying not to think about it,” she said.
“We understand, but it’s part of our job to go over the facts. It would help us if you could try.”
Gemma nodded.
“I was up early today. I couldn’t really sleep, last night, because I was thinking about poor Iain. It’s awful, having all this happen on your doorstep,” she said, and they nodded sympathetically. “Anyway, since I was already up, I decided to take the dog for a walk.”
As if he had overheard her last few words, the dog nosed its way around the edge of the bar and looked up at the newcomers with a quizzical look in its eyes.
Yates tickled the dog’s ears, obligingly.
“Around what time was that?” MacKenzie asked.
“It was just as the sun was coming up—maybe, seven, seven-fifteen? It’s all in the statement I gave—”
“We appreciate it,” MacKenzie murmured, and gave her an encouraging smile. “It must have been a beautiful sunrise. We miss that, living in the city.”
Gemma smiled in return. There was nothing more flattering than when a stranger complimented your home and the patch of sky she had claimed as her very own.
“It was lovely,” she agreed. “All reds and yellows, after the storm the night before. I strolled down towards the harbour with the dog and I thought I’d waste some time before the bakery opened.”
“Where did you go?”
“It was the dog who led the way, really,” Gemma said, with a grimace. “He kept tugging me down towards the lime kilns. I don’t usually walk down that way but since I wasn’t in a hurry, I let him choose the direction. I can’t help thinking I wish I hadn’t, then somebody else would have found her.”
MacKenzie understood what she meant; discovering a body wasn’t usually included on anyone’s Bucket List of life experiences.
“Mandy’s family are grateful that you found her and reported it,” was all she said. “Did you call the police right away?”
Gemma nodded.
“There was nobody around that I could see, so I rang Carole.”
“That’s Carole Kirby,” MacKenzie repeated, for Yates’ benefit. “The local sergeant in charge of Seahouses Police Station?”
“Yes, we sometimes do pilates together, so I just rang her landline number.”
While MacKenzie was focused on Gemma, Yates’ eyes had strayed towards the man standing quietly beside her.
“We have to ask a number of routine questions as part of our enquiries,” she said, in the kind of no-nonsense tone that made MacKenzie proud. “Could you tell us where you both were during the hours of nine p.m. last night and seven o’clock this morning?”
There was an awkward pause.
“Ah—do we need a solicitor or anything?”
Yates’ eyes strayed towards MacKenzie, who waited for her to see it through. There would be many times during her time as a murder detective—once she passed the exam—where she’d have to ask difficult, uncomfortable questions. Questioning a witness—who might also be a suspect—about where they were during the relevant timeframe was the least of it.
“No, Mr Hutchinson, you don’t need a solicitor unless you feel you would like one,” Yates replied, in even tones. “As I say, these are routine questions we’re asking of everybody who knew or came into contact with the deceased.”
That seemed to satisfy him, and Yates breathed a sigh of relief.
“Um, well, we had a bit of a long day, yesterday, didn’t we?” he asked of the woman next to him, who nodded. “Your colleagues were here until late in the day, questioning us about Iain Tucker, and I spent a bit of time getting together the CCTV footage. Then, the bar and restaurant were pretty full all evening.”
“Nothing like a bit of juicy murder to bring people together,” Gemma said, sarcastically.
“True enough,” he said. “The kitchen was busy right up until final orders, and it took forever to get people out at closing time.”
“Which was?”
“Well, we closed a bit earlier last night, around midnight. Everyone was exhausted. Josh and Daisy left a bit before then, after her shift ended—”
“About eleven,” Gemma put in.
“Yes, around then, and Gemma and I spent a bit longer tidying the place up. We locked up and went straight to bed, afterwards. Josh has his own key,” he added.
MacKenzie looked across
at Yates, waiting to see if she’d ask another difficult question, and was pleased when she did.
“Ah, this is a bit delicate, but can I ask whether you, ah, co-habit?”
The pair looked at each other and giggled like schoolchildren. There was no other word for it.
“I suppose we do, don’t we?”
“I hope so,” Hutch murmured, smiling down into her eyes.
“So, just to be clear, you went up to bed together?”
“Since you’re so interested, no, we didn’t go to bed together last night,” Gemma almost snapped. She was a woman who valued her privacy and always had done. It stemmed from being the butt of so much local gossip after Kris left, she supposed, but the thought of being the topic of other people’s conversation was abhorrent.
“I went up to my flat on the first floor, and I heard Hutch going up to his flat directly above ours not long after.”
“Thank you,” Yates murmured. “Is that your recollection too, sir?”
He seemed surprised that she would check.
“Yes, I went upstairs not long afterwards. I heard Josh come back in around twenty-past twelve, too.”
While Yates made a note, Hutch turned to MacKenzie.
“Do you have any leads?” he asked.
“We’re pursuing all lines of enquiry.”
* * *
After the two women left, Hutch turned to Gemma.
“I’ve been thinking, we should ask if Daisy wants to move in with us here, for the time being.”
Gemma thought of her son and his girlfriend under the same roof—and of all the ‘bumps in the night’—and opened her mouth to reject the idea.
“They’re grown adults,” he reminded her, before she’d had time to utter the first syllable. “Now that our relationship is…different, you could bunk in with me and let them have your apartment, or vice versa, whatever you prefer. They’d have their own space and she’d have company around her.”
She looked up into his bright blue eyes and any further argument died in her throat. It made sense, what he suggested, and it was the right thing to do.
“Alright,” she said, feeling a weight settle against her chest. “We can speak to Josh when he comes home.”
Hutch pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“There, that wasn’t so hard.”
CHAPTER 20
Waves rocked Pete Tawny’s boat as they navigated their way through Staple Sound, a rough channel of water separating the two main clusters of islands which together made up the Farnes. Closest to the mainland was Inner Farne, where they had left Janine Richardson to her bird-watching, while Outer Farne lay further out to sea and, even further beyond, the tiny islet known as Knivestone.
To understand the life Iain Tucker had lived and to get a better feel for the terrain, Ryan and Phillips placed their trust in the capable hands of the lighthouse keeper and watched with frank admiration as he guided the boat through strong currents, all the while singing a bastardized version of the late, and great, David Bowie’s Starman. In other circumstances, it might have made them laugh, but they were otherwise occupied in clinging on to the safety rail for grim life.
“See over there!” Tawny called out, pointing to the port side. “That’s Gun Rocks. If you dive down a few metres, you’ll see old cannons lying under the water. Nobody knows which wreck they came from, but the seals love ‘em!”
Ryan grinned, momentarily forgetting the reason they were there.
“You can understand how Iain got into all this, can’t you?” he called out to Frank, not minding as another wave sprayed salty water into his hair and eyes. “It’s an adventure.”
Phillips looked at him as though he’d sprouted three heads.
“You’ve gone daft, that’s what,” he declared. “The sooner we get you back on dry land, the better. This isn’t Pirates of the Caribbean, y’nah.”
Ryan grinned fiercely and, for a moment, had the look of a pirate about him.
“Doesn’t it make you feel alive, Frank, being out here on the water?”
Phillips nearly lost his footing.
“I’ll tell you what makes me feel alive, son. A night in with the missus and the phone switched off.”
Ryan laughed again and, with some small sense of achievement, Phillips realised it was starting to become a habit.
“Lighthouse up ahead!” Tawny called back to them and, as they rounded another rocky outcrop, Outer Farne appeared with its pretty red and white striped lighthouse which had once been home to Grace Darling.
Ryan leaned forward to speak to Tawny more clearly.
“Whereabouts did you see Iain?”
“Over there,” Tawny replied, pointing in the direction of the deceptively flat rocks spreading out beneath the lighthouse.
Ryan had thought Longstone lighthouse stood on the most easterly island of the Farnes, but he remembered what Janine had told them about Iain exploring the waters even further out to sea and looked around the wider vicinity.
“Is that Knivestone, over there?” he asked, and peered through the rain towards an isolated rock that must have been a bane to sailors for centuries.
“Aye, that’s it,” Tawny replied. “The diving schools do tours to Knivestone to see the Abyssinia. It was a German steamer which sank in 1921. Go down about twenty feet and you’ll find her broken up all around the gullies.”
“Not today, mate,” Phillips called out, and Tawny chuckled.
Ryan looked once more towards the slippery, aptly-named hunk of rock lying in wait for unsuspecting seafarers and felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He could hardly imagine a young girl and her father braving weather much worse than this, risking their own lives against the overwhelming power of the ocean. It was just as difficult to imagine a quiet, introverted marine archaeologist pitting himself against the tides in the dead of night, no matter how much he’d loved diving.
Someone, or something, had driven him to it, and ultimately onto the rocks, too.
* * *
Back at the Coastguard’s Office, MacKenzie and Yates returned to find Lowerson hunched over a laptop computer with a half-finished cheese toastie sitting forlornly at his elbow. Across the room, a police constable was reading a dog-eared glossy magazine as they manned the telephone, while a small electric fan heater whirred away in the corner and circulated the musty air.
“Talk about staff shortages,” MacKenzie said. “Did the rest of the team call in sick or something?”
Lowerson looked up and stretched his arms above his head to ease out the kinks, an action which drew Yates’ reluctant attention.
“Ryan and Phillips should be on their way back,” he said. “They went out on Pete Tawny’s boat to speak to one of the rangers on Inner Farne. Alex Walker’s still trying to map the last movements of Tucker’s boat to see where it ended up and, as for the rest of them? I haven’t got the foggiest.”
Yates laughed a bit too loudly and MacKenzie gave her an odd look.
“Have you heard from Faulkner?” she enquired, turning her attention back to Lowerson.
“Yeah, I had a word with him earlier. He says they’ve finished going over Mandy Jones’ office and they’re making a start on her cottage, soon. Ideally, they’ll need the place to themselves, so one of us will probably need to have a word with Daisy and see if she has anywhere else to stay, for the time being.”
MacKenzie reached for the tin of custard creams and was alarmed to find it completely empty.
“What happened here?” she demanded, all thoughts of murder momentarily cast aside.
“Take it up with your husband,” Lowerson replied, holding his hands out, palms facing in the universal sign for peace. “I had nothing to do with it—well, I had three biscuits to do with it.”
“The man’s a menace,” she muttered, and stalked across to dump the tin into the large plastic bin in the corner of the room. “Did Faulkner tell you anything else?”
“All he told me was that the blood pat
tern and general trace evidence suggests Mandy died where she fell, inside the lime kiln. There’s no sign of any other murder weapon, either, so they’ve bagged the iron hook up for testing. He’s waiting for approval to put a rush on it, guv, otherwise it’ll take days.”
“Approve it,” she said, and almost clapped a hand over her own mouth. That was Ryan’s call to make, not hers.
“Approve what?” the man himself asked, as he entered the room rubbing a towel over his slick wet hair. Phillips trailed behind him looking like a bedraggled cat and, for the life of her, MacKenzie couldn’t say why she found it so appealing.
“Ah, we were just talking about approving the resources to allow the CSIs to hurry along the testing of the samples they’ve taken today,” she said. “I was saying we should approve it.”
“Good thinking,” Ryan said. “Would’ve done the same thing, myself. What’s next on the agenda?”
MacKenzie stared at him for a moment and he raised a single, dark eyebrow.
“What?”
“I—nothing.”
“Good. For a moment there, I thought you were going to tell me you doubted your own good judgment,” he said, with his usual insight. “We had a bit of luck out on the water today—”
Phillips let out an eloquent snort, which Ryan chose to ignore.
“We believe Iain Tucker’s boat entered Wideopen Gut at around one in the morning, on Friday. Working backwards, it takes thirty or so minutes to get from Seahouses to Inner Farne, which is where he was seen entering the Gut, so that tells us he set off from Seahouses at around half-past midnight or a bit before. Assuming for now that he was still alive and piloting the boat, that gives us a window for time of death of between roughly one a.m. and ten-fifteen a.m., which is when he was discovered, albeit the pathologist thinks he’d been dead for up to fifteen hours prior to that.”
“Sea exposure makes it hard to settle on a time of death,” Phillips put in, and dabbed a towel over his balding head.
“Agreed. If Iain died around one a.m. or thereabouts, it may still be consistent,” Ryan agreed. “That’s all presuming our witness, Janine Richardson, is reliable.”